Driven to educate
Sebastopol's "Electric Vehicle Lab" holds week-long workshops for teachers from around the country
On Friday morning, while their own students were likely counting down the minutes until the weekend, a group of teachers from around the country were putting the finishing touches on an electric vehicle (EV) they had built from scratch over the course of the previous week.
The teacher’s workshop—one of several per year—was hosted by Switch Vehicles, a Sebastopol-based business off of Morris Street that is a national leader in building EV “kits” specifically designed for education. (Read more about the company and its founder, Peter Oliver, here.)
To celebrate before they each went their separate ways, every one of the teachers took turns doing burnouts—a privilege that, depending how nice or naughty they’ve been, may or may not be extended to their students back home.
The three-wheeled vehicle is fun indeed, with a top speed of 90 miles an hour and a battery that can last for 55 miles. The idea is that students—mostly those in high school—can learn about EVs and about electricity in general through a course in which the EV is built from the ground up.
Unlike EVs for sale, which are complex and feature lots of parts like air conditioning or doors, the Switch EV is down to the bones, with the wiring easily accessible.
While some of the teachers at this workshop are in Career Technical Education (CTE) at traditional public schools, others come from trade- or technology-focused high schools. Some come from a more mechanical background, while others come from the environmental studies or math/science side of things. Analy and Windsor High School are among the local schools that have received EV kits.
Laura Kubiak, an “alternative energy systems” teacher at Toledo Technical Academy in Ohio, which will soon have four Switch EV kits, says that her class has already become one of the most popular in the school. Kubiak’s high school uses grant money to pay for the vehicles, which Kubiak says cost her school around $70,000 each.
“I want to use the EVs to educate students about environmental sustainability,” Kubiak said, referencing the obvious fact that EVs don’t emit any greenhouse gases, unlike traditional cars.
In Laura’s classes, students in groups of four will build the EV from scratch over the course of the semester. The program isn’t the same at every high school, but, like the teachers themselves, every cohort of students will inevitably run into problems that require a clear understanding of the systems at play to solve.
Indeed, when the teacher’s EV seemed ready for a spin, there was a loose fuse. When the group tried to fix it, a wire came loose. Then something wasn’t plugged in. Then the tires had to be aligned. The workshop last week helped the teachers gain a more solid grasp of the material so that they can work through these inevitable problems with their students—and hopefully give them the tools to figure it out on their own.
“This allows us to teach the basics of steering, suspension, brakes and, most importantly, the EV principles,” said TJ Wilson, a shop teacher at Willamina High School in Salem, Oregon. “We get to be hands on, so we can go back home and teach our kids how to be hands on. We are going to see these problems in the classroom—there is no doubt about that.”
Many of the principles of EVs, so to speak, can be better understood when one looks under the hood. For example, EVs don’t have transmissions and instead are “geared” by a “control box” that serves more or less the same purpose.
“There’s lots of math we can work on with this,” said Bruce Lewis, an alternative education teacher from Woodland, California. “It’s good for kids who can’t sit still,” Lewis added.
Since a CTE course is required for high school graduation throughout California and much of the country, the EV classes can fulfill a requirement all while teaching valuable skills for college or a career. At the very least, they’ll get kids excited.
“We just received one, and now we need to figure out how to incorporate it into the curriculum,” said Paul Clement, a CTE teacher from Bellingham, Washington. “There is so much to learn.”
“We expect student buy-in to be super high,” Clement added. “The fun factor is going to be the selling point.”
What a marvelous project for our youth to learn about electrically engeneered vehicles. Thank you for this information.
Nice and useful event and news